Osita Chidoka, OFR, NPoM, Chancellor of the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, has challenged Abia State to convert the gains of Governor Alex Otti’s administration into enduring institutions, arguing that the true test of the present government will be whether it continues to work effectively without the Governor’s direct intervention.
Chidoka spoke on Thursday at the International Conference Centre, Umuahia, where he delivered the keynote lecture, “Abia at 35: The Rise of a New Abia,” at the ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of the creation of Abia State.
Reviewing Abia’s history since 1991, Chidoka recalled the state’s national prominence at the beginning of the Fourth Republic and said Abia is experiencing another defining moment under Governor Otti, OFR. He said the visible improvements in roads, urban renewal and public services must be converted into institutional capacity that outlasts the present administration.
“The real measure of this administration will therefore not only be what Governor Otti achieves while he is Governor. It will be what Abia government learns to do because he was Governor. The greater inheritance is a government that has learnt how to work,” Chidoka said.
A high point of the lecture came when Chidoka produced his personal copy of Otti’s 2014 book, Saving the Future: Agenda for Economic Development and Prosperity, and connected ideas the Governor had written more than a decade ago with policies his administration is implementing today.
He quoted Otti’s position that education is “a pillar that other sectors rest on” and that “educational accountability is the backbone for quality assurance,” pointing to the increased priority given to education in Abia’s budgets since 2023 as evidence that Otti’s earlier thinking had shaped his choices in office.
Responding after the lecture, Governor Otti departed from his prepared remarks to speak extempore, thanking Chidoka for a well-researched lecture that reinforced his conviction that governance should not revolve around one individual.
Governor Otti said he had not returned to the 2014 book in years, but that its ideas had stayed with him because he had written them himself and continued to guide his administration, particularly on education.
Chidoka said increased spending and physical improvements were only a starting point. The real measure of education investment, he said, would be whether children are learning better, while the broader test of the administration would be whether its standards become the routine practice of government rather than the achievement of one leader.
He summed up the challenge before the state as moving “from a capable Governor to a capable government, and from a capable government to a capable state.”
The anniversary ceremony also featured a video goodwill message from the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, an Abia State-born global figure, along with panel discussions on the state’s development, cultural displays and poetry performances.
The event was attended by the Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, members of the National and State Assemblies, members of the State Executive Council, traditional rulers, clergy, civil servants and members of the public.
Chidoka concluded that Abia’s ambition at 35 should be to make competent government ordinary, so that functioning schools, clean cities, passable roads, prompt salaries and pensions, and public institutions that work become the normal expectation of citizens rather than the exception.
“Thirty-five years after its creation, perhaps that is the next Abia moment: not simply that one governor governed well, but that good government became the habit of the state,” Chidoka, said.
